


Five Times Clyde Barrow Thought About Death...

by Katydid_99



Category: Bonnie & Clyde - Wildhorn/Black/Menchell, Bonnie and Clyde, Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Bonnie and Clyde (TV 2013), Historical Criminals RPF
Genre: 1930s, 5 + 1 Things, 5 Times, 5 Times Plus 1, Car Accidents, Clyde's POV, Death (duh), F/M, Gangsters, Great Depression, Guns, Historical Accuracy, History Spoilers, Physical Disability, Poetry, Poverty, Prison, Public Enemy Era, Smoking, The American Southwwest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-29 13:44:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13928325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katydid_99/pseuds/Katydid_99
Summary: ...And One Time He Couldn't Think At All





	1. 1916: Papers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The following story is based on historical events. Some things may have been embellished for narrative effect or blanks in the historical record, but for the most part these are real things that happened to real people. 
> 
> During the last visit he made home, Clyde Barrow learned that his parent's were waiting until he died to also bury his older brother because they couldn't afford two gravestones. Upon learning this, Clyde made a special request for their epitaph: "Gone But Not Forgotten". I write this in honor of that request so that we may learn not only from a man's many mistakes, but also from his few good judgments.
> 
> Please enjoy!

The first time Clyde Chestnut Barrow (Clyde  _ Champion  _ Barrow to his friends, Papa, and little sister) thinks about death, he’s seven years old and wearing the nicest clothes he’s ever had in his entire life. There’s been a death in the family, and Mama splurged on clothes so everyone can look presentable at the funeral. His stomach cramps with hunger a little more than usual over the next few weeks, but he’d gladly never eat again if it meant he could afford to wear stuff like this all the time.

Memories of childhood are always a bit fuzzy, for Clyde especially because he preferred to live in the present, so details of the funeral are obscured. He can’t recall what day it was, if the sun was shining or not, or even who had died beyond it being some auntie or uncle. Surely it was hot and dirty, because everything was back then. Mama was probably crying, though Mama cried a lot in those days. He remembers big brother Marvin ( _ Buck  _ to everyone who didn’t want a black eye) fidgeting next to him, tugging at his tie like it was a noose. He can distinctly recall the sound of a shovelful of dirt hitting the old wood box in the hole in the ground. 

The funeral wasn’t even mentioned in the papers. 

That’s what stops him in his tracks, reading the weekly paper that he managed to swipe from the breakfast table. He knew about death; ever since the old hound dog they kept to keep pests out of the chicken coop got rabies and Papa had to shoot him. He knew about being poor; and resented the hell out of it every time he saw Mama crying over a table full of bill or a sibling digging around in the trash for something to eat. But it’d never occurred to him that the two things were connected.

He was gonna die one day, and no one was going to know or care about it.

He rips the newspaper up and that night he convinces Buck to let him come with him on a grocery store heist. They make a clean escape and Clyde sticks five dollars in a milk bottle for Mama to find the next morning, then climbs to the roof for a bit. The Devil’s Back Porch is black spare for the occasional lantern and a hint of moonlight. At the very edge of the horizon he thinks he can see Dallas, sparkling with nightlife, and beyond that there’s the sky and the stars.

That night Clyde sets his lip and promises that when he dies, he’s  _ not _ going to die forgotten.


	2. 1930: Broken by the Devil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains depictions of rape. Please skip if you are sensitive to such things.

The second time Clyde finds himself thinking about death, he’s barely twenty-one and pinned against the filthy tile floor of the prison bathroom with his pants around his ankles.

At this point he’s thinking about anything and everything. The price of gas in Waco. Those new motors Henry Ford’s putting in his automobiles. If Blanche knew what she was getting into marrying into this family. How much he hates being so small (“Just like a pretty dame,” Crowder had once purred in his ear with rotten breath). If Buck was facing the same kind of stuff in jail. How hard it would be to smuggle one of those pipes from the plumbing project outside into his cell, just in case. Anything and everything to distract from the piston-like pumping in his backside or the man’s hand wrapped around his cock.

Bonnie comes up a lot in these thoughts. Her hair, her smile, her eyes. The way her face lit up watching a picture show. Her hands gripping a pencil while she wrote. How she was never going to touch him again if he told her about this. God, how he misses her...

He tried to lift his head up a little, just to get the stench of the bathroom floor away from his nose, but Crowder grabbed a fistful of his hair and slammed it back to the tile. His grip on him tightened, and Clyde felt blood gush into his mouth as he bit his tongue to keep from crying out.

 _This is it,_ he thought. _This is how I die._

Despite his position he managed a scoff. It was getting ridiculous how often those words came to him in this hellhole. Every day slaving away in the scorching day and freezing night, every time he found himself surrounded by guards taking turns taking punches, every hour in the hot tin box as punishment for some unknown infraction... this was no place for a man. _But there are exceptions to every rule…_

Crowder finished, rebuckled his belt, gave him a swat across the buttocks, told him what a good job he did, and left as though nothing happened. Crowder told him stuff like that all the time. That it was supposed to hurt, that he couldn't help himself around him, that if he tried anything it was gonna be just that much harder for him... credit where credit was due, Crowder had not lied to Clyde once. 

A few minutes later another inmate came in and helped him off the floor, offering a rag and a cigarette. Clyde took both, wiping himself off before pulling his pants back on and lighting up. The man- Scalley, he remembered- watched as Clyde took a long drag, willing the tobacco to calm him down. He pretended the tears in his eyes were from the smoke.

“He’s killin’ you,” Scalley finally said in a soft kind of voice.

Clyde laughed. “Tell me somthin’ I don’t know.”


	3. 1933: Christmas in April

The third time comes as a surprise to Clyde, because this is supposed to be a good day.

Despite being on the road all the time with his new-found gang, they make an effort to visit home as much as they can. Days away are good- the miles of open road, the horses thundering under the car hood, the satisfaction at the steadily-growing bag of money in the back seat- but all that pales in comparison to days home. Those are days of siblings with new nieces and nephews, home cooking while Mama fusses over how thin he is (he and Bonnie both have always been on the slight side), and tall tales of the American Gangster.

Then, of course, there were the gifts. 

Money and food. Clothes and toys. Booze and anything that might have been detailed in letters. Every time they’d deliver and the way everyone lit up could outshine Dallas. The last time they went back Bonnie told him about an old story about a giant who stole fire from the gods and gave it as a gift to man. Clyde figures if what they’re doing comes close to that, then they must be doing something right.

That was about four months ago, so another round home is overdue. This time it’s gonna be big, because this is the first trip after those photographs of them were picked up in Joplin. All of a sudden they’ve gone from small-time hoodlums to nationally recognized gangsters among the ranks of Babyface and Pretty Boy. 

The pictures inevitably comes up in conversation and Bonnie promptly slugs him across the shoulder- also inevitable. The newspapers seem dead-set on showing off the picture where he stuck a stogie in her mouth as a joke before the camera went off, despite any personal objections.

“He said that no one was going to see it but us!” she complains. Dinner wound down hours ago and now everyone’s just hanging around the park chatting or playing.

“And no one was supposed to,” he counters easily. “How was I supposed to know we were gonna end up leavin’ them behind?”

“You shouldn’t have taken it in the first place! Now the entire country thinks I’m some classless harlot.”

“Aw, cheer up Bon-Bon,” Buck calls from across the lawn, Blanche wrapped in his arms. “We all know that Clyde’s the real classless harlot.”

Everyone bursts into laughter while Clyde grins and rolls over in the grass so that he’s looking down at her. “And proud of it,” he announces before leaning in for a kiss.

“Get a room!” Bonnie’s brother hollars, making a megaphone with his hands. There’s more laughter as Clyde sticks him the bird, not looking up from his liplock.

It’s not until later, while he’s digging around in his car  for a fresh pack of cigarettes that it hits him.

“Hey, Clyde?”

He turns around and sees Lillian Marie standing somewhat awkwardly, toes pointed at each other and holding her hands behind her back. She’s got the hair ribbon Buck and Blanche picked out in, a twist of lavender that makes her curly locks light up like gold, but she looks awfully sad.

Clyde leans against the car and looks down at his baby sister. “Somethin’ wrong, Lil?”

“Did you really kill a guy?”

Something in Clyde's chest gets real cold all of a sudden. He blinks, willing himself to stay composed. To not think of the pop of a semi-automatic or the flash of red on a white dress shirt. “Why you askin’?”

She bites her lip and shoves a something into her chest. It’s a news clipping, dated to last holiday season. “I see,” Clyde hums. He remembers that job; he had to kill that marshal on Christmas morning.

“Please don’t tell Mama,” Lillian Marie says suddenly, the words starting to come out faster and faster. “She told me I wasn’t old enough- that it wasn’t proper for a young lady to be readin’ about those kinds of things in the paper but- but Jesus, Clyde, I get so scared with you on the road. It sounds so exciting in the tabloids, but then I hear about the cops and the stuff Hoover’s plannin’ and now you’ve killed a guy and- and-!”

She’s worked herself into hysterics, fat tears running down her thin face. Big brother instincts kick in and he clutches her by the shoulders, whispering “hey” and “shhh” in a repetative mantra until she calms. Lillian Marie is fifteen, sweet as jam, but old enough to know the truth.

“Lil, I want you to listen to me, and try to understand, because this ain’t easy.” He swallows hard, wishing he could be anywhere else. “I did kill that man. And I killed others, too. Five so far, I think. I try not to, but if I can’t run, then I shoot.”

“Why?”

_ Because every time I close my eyes I’m back rotting in that cell with blood in my mouth and hands on my skin. _

“Because I can’t go back to jail.”

Lillian Marie is quiet for a second, then she hugs him. “I’m glad you ain’t in jail.”

The cold’s still there, but now it’s wrapped in a barrier of warmth. “Glad someone is,” he quips as he scoops her up onto his shoulders. “C’mon, let’s get back to the folks.”

“Kay,” she giggles, plucking his hat from his head and sticking it on her own. “Hey Clyde?”

“Yeah, Lil?”

“Do you ever think about the guys you’ve killed?”

“...Every day of my life, kiddo.”


	4. 1933: Inferno

The fourth time Clyde’s thoughts are brought to death… he swears he didn’t mean to.

It was dark. He was exhausted. They were going eighty in a forty zone. Bonnie’s left hand was dangling idly in his lap in that seemingly-innocent way that would leave him hard for miles.

He didn’t mean to miss that turn.

He doesn’t see it until Bonnie shouts, “Clyde, watch out!” Or she would have. All she managed to get out was the hard C of his first name, like the hiss of a radio. By then it was too late.

The Ford V8 tore through the barrier like it was wet paper. Then there was a weightlessness, upside down floating with loose change and food wrappers. A sharp, sudden pain to the forehead. Flying, flying, flying….

Next thing Clyde Champion Barrow- head of the Barrow Gang and Texan Terror- knows, he’s face down in the dirt and grass.

He pushes himself up slowly, the world around him feeling sluggish and fuzzy. The car is in flames, an orange blossom in the blueblack Texas night. He’s surrounded by bits of broken glass. Everything hurts. His new suit jacket is shredded. Something warm and sticky drips down his face. W.D. groans next to him. Bonnie is-

_Where’s Bonnie?_

Suddenly a scream slices through the night and Clyde’s attention is turned to the ruined car. His heart skips a beat.

“Bonnie!”

W.D. comes to and gasps, running over to the car. Clyde’s already there, trying to get a good look inside. Bonnie’s alive, the flames licking dangerously close to her face, and struggling. The V8’s rightside-up, which is a blessing, but the front is crunched up like an accordian. Something’s pinned her leg.

She looks at him, her bluebonnet eyes glowing in the fire behind unshed tears. “C-Clyde-!”

“It’s okay, baby,” Clyde responds, shedding his ruined jacket and using it to grip the hot metal.

“We’re gonna get you outta there Ms. Parker,” W.D. chimes in. For someone as trigger happy as he was, he was always oddly polite to him and Bonnie.

They tug and pull at the door, trying to pry it open, and all while Clyde chants sweet nothings to Bonnie. Bonnie baby. Bonnie darling. Bonnie sugar. Between the fire and the situation he’s crying something awful, but he keeps at it. My babydoll. My partner in crime. My brave girl. Daddy’s got this. Everything’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay.

On the inside he screams. _Why did Buck have to take a seperate car tonight of all nights? Why am I so goddamn weak? Why is this happening? This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. We were supposed to run our course. I’m the one who’s supposed to die. She was supposed to get away and have a good life. I should be in there. I SHOULD BE IN THERE._

Then, a grace of sorts.

There’s a snap in the grass and Clyde immediately whips around, pistol in hand. W.D. continues trying the door. Two men, unarmed, run up through the grass.

“Holy shit!” one exclaims as they near the inferno. “That your car?”

“My girl’s trapped in there,” Clyde manages.

The first man starts to the car, but the other stops him and squints at Clyde. “Say,” he says, voice filling with recognition. “Ain’t you-?”

“Yes, I am. And that’s him. And she who you think she is. Just get her out of there.”

“I don’t help criminals-”

“ _Get her out of there or I swear to fucking God I will blow your goddamn head off!_ ”

The threat’s empty- the gun in his hand is basically a pea-shooter- but he doesn’t care. He’s bloody, crying, and terrified, which comes out of his mouth as a lion’s roar. He just doesn’t care.

The four manage to get Bonnie out and the nicer of the two men let them bunk in his garage. By four o’clock the next morning they’ve stolen every bit of medical supplies in his house, hotwired his car, and are about an hour down the road. He hotwires another V8 the next town over.

It’s not until they make it out of Texas that Clyde pulls to the side of the road to throw up.


	5. 1934: The End of the Line

The fifth time it happens Clyde’s twenty-five, tired, and can’t manage to think of anything else.

They’re in a motel somewhere in Louisiana, on the way up to see Henry Methman up at his folk’s place. They can’t stay in places like this as often as used to, back before everything got so damn big, but it’s a small enough joint that they can manage for a few nights. 

_ Back before… _

Buck’s dead. Blanche is half-blind in jail somewhere. God knows where W.D. is. They visited home two months earlier, and though no one said it out loud, everyone knew it was the last time. 

Bonnie sitting on the bed in nothing but her silky pink bra and panties, a normally inviting sight, but it’s hard to get aroused while watching her rub salve on her burn mottled legs. The fire ended up calcifying the muscles down there. The one doctor they managed to see in Topeka said she’d never walk proper again.

It was an adjustment, but if there was anything that Clyde knew next to auto mechanics and love-making, it was how to make do. They pulled less heists, and when they did Bonnie stayed in the car more. Clyde would carry her on his shoulders if they had to make a getaway on foot. Nights would include foot rubs and occasionally dancing: him holding her bridal style and swaying in a slow circle to the music.

But there was no music right now. They were coming to the end; he could feel it in his bones. It was something he tried to ignore, but they were in too deep. The country was changing, the police finally getting an upgrade. The newspapers gave them credit for crimes they didn’t commit- which was funny until it made them seem like a bigger and bigger threat. On the last trip home Mama and Papa told him that they couldn’t afford a gravestone for both him and Buck and hoped it was okay if you were buried together.

Bonnie looked up from her bandaging, then over at Clyde. “Hey Baby?”

He turned around with a smile. There are still nights where he can’t bring himself to even look at her, what with what he’s done to her and what the world has done to him. There are some nights where he even hates her a little, for all the ways-out he gave her that she stubbornly ignored, like a housewife ignoring the lipstick on her husband's collar. But there's no time for that now. He just loves her, more than anything left for him in this world. “Yeah, Darlin’?”

“We’re gonna die, aren’t we?”

Clyde sighs. “I’m afraid so.”

Bonnie nods with grim acceptance. “I thought so.” She looks heart-shatteringly sad for a second, then she smiles that special smile at him. “Come to bed?”

He complies, shedding his clothes till he’s just in his trousers and undershirt and crawls in. Before he can pull the covers over the both of them Bonnie stops him and laughs. 

“Look,” she says, indicating their feet. Both have seen better days- hers shriveled and mottled with burns and his cut up and missing two toes (another souvenir from prison.) “We match.”

“I guess we do,” Clyde chuckles, then pulls up the blanket while she turns out the lamp. Bonnie rolls away from him and presses her back up to his chest while he wraps his arms around her waist. Her skin’s still baby soft under his callouses.

“How long do you suppose we’ve got?” Bonnie whispers.

“Not long.”

“This has been a long time commin’, huh?”

“Guess so.”

“How long have you figured?” 

“Since Wellington, I guess. Maybe Joplin.”

“You always were slow to figuring out the long term.”

“Rude. When did you know, little miss smartie-pants?”

“Since the day we met.”

“...Then why did you stay?”

Bonnie doesn’t speak. Instead, she rolls back over and kisses Clyde in the way that made the sun shine at midnight and snow fall in Arizona. 

“At the very least,” Bonnie murmured against his lips, “we know the end of the story. ‘Some day they’ll go down together and they’ll bury them side by side.’”

Clyde smiled and held her close. Bonnie had been working on this poem for years now as a final gift to her Mother, and by now Clyde knew the whole thing by heart. This was their story.

“‘To few it’ll be greif-’” Clyde continued, “‘to the law a relief, but it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.”


	6. 1934: A Short and Lovin' Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An Epilogue

There’s no sixth time. On May 23, 1934, Clyde Chestnut Barrow dies in an ambush set by Frank Hammer and his posse. He and his loyal moll, Bonnie Elizabeth Parker, were taken by surprise in their car and shot to death by over a hundred rounds of firepower.

***

After the first bullet catches his temple, Clyde watches the entire thing from the other side of the road. He feels different, lighter and calmer than he has in years. Tearing his gaze away from the- his car, still being riddled with bullets, he looks down at his clothes. He’s wearing expensive white linen trousers, vest, and shirt in a vaguely nostalgic cut. Reminiscent of that first fine suit he got eighteen long years ago. His scars and calluses are missing. His trigger finger has lost its arthritic twitch and his lungs don’t wheeze from tobacco. Experimentally, he wiggles his toes in his shoes.

All ten there and accounted for.

Huh.

Suddenly aware of a presence by his side, he turns and sees Bonnie, standing independently for the first time in months. His heart swells. She’s dressed to kill (Clyde almost laughs at his own joke) in a gauzy dress made from the same material as his clothes and little white flowers peppered into her hair. She seems to glow in the pink-gold light of the sunrise like some fairy from a child's story as she stares at the wreckage before eventually looking up at him. She smiles and offers him her hand, which he gladly takes. 

Together they watch the gunfire eventually stop, their old broken bodies slump out of the car, the lawmen whoop and shake hands and rummage through their stuff. Clyde almost gets angry, watching these supposed “good guys” of the story be so disrespectful, but for some reason he doesn’t think it’ll do much good. The lightness inside of him; it's not just his physical wounds that are healed. All his rage, sorrow, fear... it's melted away. For the first time in his life (afterlife?), he feels content.

He looks down at Bonnie. Sweet, brave, incredible Bonnie, who’s stuck with him all these years. “Any regrets?”

Bonnie smiles softly and shrugs “Maybe, but there’s no time for that now.”

“Funny,” Clyde said as he looked away from the ambush site for the last time. “I was thinking the same thing.”

And with that they vanish into the early morning sunlight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> Sources Used for this Work:
> 
> http://texashideout.tripod.com/clipping.html
> 
> http://texashideout.tripod.com/huntsville.html
> 
> https://www.geni.com/people/Clyde-Barrow/6000000002126906844
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1AjbR4XA_g&t=2667s
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie_and_Clyde
> 
> https://genius.com/Bonnie-parker-the-story-of-bonnie-and-clyde-the-end-of-the-line-annotated


End file.
